U.S. Judge Hears Denver Plan To End Compulsory Busing

Denver--The Denver school board's proposal to end eight years of
mandatory busing, formulated in response to a judge's request for a
"unitary, non-racial" enrollment policy, is not a desegregation plan,
school officials admitted in federal district court last week.

In a "full evidentiary hearing," Denver School Superintendent Joseph
Brzeinski told U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch that the board's
controversial "Total Access Plan" is an educational program that does
not even mention school desegregation.

The plan, approved by a bitterly divided school board last December
on a 4-to-3 vote, is being offered to Judge Matsch in response to his
call for a constitutionally acceptable enrollment plan that would allow
him to conclude Denver's precedent-setting, 13-year-old desegregation
suit.

The Total Access Plan is an open-enrollment, magnet-school proposal
that would end forced busing and allow most of Denver's 60,000 students
to attend the school of their choice. Included in the plan are 35
optional programs ranging from traditional basic education to
advanced-learning centers.

The plan has generated widespread controversy throughout the
city.

After the school board endorsed the proposal, school officials
mounted an intensive public-relations campaign to explain the plan to
Denver citizens. Teachers were asked to help develop the magnet
programs slated for their schools. And three 30-minute prime-time
programs favorable to the plan were aired by the local
educational-television station, which is licensed to the city school
system.

A well-known commercial television anchorman who normally hosts the
weekly program, which focuses on city school activities, refused to
participate in the three segments on the Total Access Plan. His main
concern, he said, was that the opinion of the school-board members who
had opposed the plan was not represented during the three shows.

Although the plan has been endorsed by the Denver Board of Realtors,
a large number of community groups have opposed it. These include the
Denver League of Women Voters, the Denver Community Desegregation
Project, three chapters of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People, the Denver Federation of Teachers, and one council
of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

The Community Education Council, a group of court-appointed
desegregation monitors, called the proposal a "re-segregation" rather
than desegregation plan. Teachers at Manual High School agreed with the
council and refused to help develop the classical-studies magnet
program scheduled for their school.

Precedents Established

Federal involvement in Denver's desegregation dispute began in 1969,
when a group of parents filed suit claiming that the local school
system was unconstitutionally segregated. Their claims were upheld in a
series of federal-court rulings, including an August 1973 decision of
the U.S. Supreme Court.

That ruling, in Keyes v. School District No. 1, established two key
precedents in desegregation case law. It was the first in which
"intentional segregation" was linked to such official actions as the
drawing of attendance zones and the selection of school sites, rather
than to explicit state laws es-tablishing separate schools for blacks
and whites. This principle has since been applied in numerous Northern
school-desegregation cases. Furthermore, the Keyes decision established
the assumption that intentional segregation in one part of a school
district implies illegal segregation throughout the district, thus
requiring a districtwide remedy.

After further hearings, the federal district court ordered citywide
desegregation, including extensive busing, to begin in the fall of
1974.

About 24,000 students are now bused daily, 15,000 of them for
purposes of desegregation. About 40 percent of all students in the
system are white, and 60 percent are members of minority groups.

Judge Matsch has set aside two weeks to hear testimony for and
against the total-access plan; he expects to rule within 30 days after
the hearing concludes.

Whatever plan he endorses--total-access, an alternative developed by
an ad hoc committee of the school board, or a continuation of the
present busing program--would be implemented next fall.

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